Envrionment: The Jungle

I first started off with by adding the trees I designed and then added boulders before I slowly filling that out by adding some of Adams foliage textures. Really happy with the outcome and it was a quicker job than I thought it would be which is good because I can now move onto animating.

Trees!

For the outside environment I first started in Unity using the terrain tools. I sculpted a nice terrain and created rocks and mountains to fill the place out a bit. I then looked up some textures and started adding layer after layer to get a nice detailed finish. It didn't really suit the graphic style we were aiming for though so I went through a long process of changing textures. I then came to the conclusion perhaps something more simple or just one texture on it's own would do the trick but the terrain itself wasn't doing it for me. So I decided to model the whole environment in Maya instead.

When moving onto designing the outside environment I first started thinking about trees. And I wanted a fairly simple model that has a lot of character like in the toon forest pack and I came up with this.

I enjoyed creating this tree design and I took a lot of inspiration from the toon forest pack which led me to looking at the textures in Viva Piñata. All the stripy textures for the grass on the toon forest pack instantly made me think of the Viva Piñata games and I never realised that adding little patterns makes all the difference. The grass in the game is nicely decorated with little leaf-like patterns and I think it looks beautiful and quite subtle due to the colours. The use of stripes in particular reminded me of football fields and I think the colours I went for are a more exaggerated version of that. I think perhaps the colours I've used are a bit too bright though? But it's hard to tell without the lighting and effects being added on to it in Unity. It might also look out of place when me and Adam combine the environments we've both been working on but they're easy changes to make.

Toon Forest Pack

So after handing over the basic environment to Adam to add assets to and fill out a bit more I drew my attention to designing the outside of the temple. I started looking around for cartoony trees and ended up stumbling upon this beautiful add on for Unity, the toon forest pack.

This pack and this style was perfect in my eyes and I would have liked to have bought it because getting add ons is a great way to help fill out environments and I might still come back to this idea in the future. In the end I didn't get it for the work we're doing at the moment because add ons are for the background only really not to decorate and cast them off as main assets. Because of that I decided it would be best to just model my own stuff and as part of the group I would also get ore credit for doing that. Plus, although this is a toon pack and I adore the style the texturing thus far for our own work is much more simple next to this so there would have been quite the dramatic contrast if I did decide to use it.

Problem Solving

So this is the UV map I did for the next character which I designed. From last time I learnt that I needed to make the UV shells on the texture editor a little bigger especially for things like the face, so that's what I did.

Again I really got stuck into this and enjoyed working around all the little nips and blips you come across. I got a little confused with the overlapping vertex points during the unfolding process for this but it's just a case of moving them around and finding out where the belong; following the lines to see what's connected to what and positioning them according to that. I did eventually come across something that I didn't know how to go about because the unwrapping shouldn't have been behaving like that. Even my tutor was stumped by it so it was just a matter of working around that. Because of little problems like that though, I thought the UV map looked quite messy this time around. I arranged everything again in a logical order but because of the problems there were a lot more individual pieces than I would have liked and it might come across as quite confusing when I hand it over to Adam. I explained everything and he said how it's arranged doesn't really matter as long as WE understand it but in industry I think that would be bad practice because the communication we had a group might not necessarily be there in a work environment.

Once again, very happy with my work and I've noticed that the more I do UV mapping the faster I'm getting and better I'm getting at spotting both problems and solutions. can't wait to see the textures being applied to this model in particular. Nothing beats seeing your creations come to life!

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy

This is an old game I had for the PS2 and I thought because of the graphics style and the setting in Egypt that it would serve as a nice reference for colours and such for the environment.













I really like the idea of using different tones of the same colour for the brick work or the flooring. I think it add that little bit more interest instead of using just one flat colour. I think this is something we should follow up for sure because our texturing isn't really going to be detailed at all but it still needs to be attractive. The majority of the world in this game is all within the brown colour palette and despite how boring it sounds it works because of the environment it's set in. I think we'll be quite heavy with the neutral brown colours but we did want a really fresh vibrant environment for the outside and we wanted to dot foliage around the temple as well just to help break up the browns.

Thought Bubble Comic Convention 2012

So just like every year for the past 4-5 years I went to the Thought Bubble Comic Convention here in Leeds. I really didn't think I'd end up going this year but I decided that it would be in my better interest since a festival and or convention of some kind is now a compulsory part of my course. This is the main reason I attended really because I'm going through some financial problems and with every passing day, going to the Animex festival up in Tee-side is looking more and more slim. It's better to have a back up plan rather than not fufil the requirements at all.

All the educational stuff aside I really enjoyed the convention again this year. It's a great atmosphere to be around people who are all coming together to celebrate the thing we love. I wasn't going to cosplay but decided to go for it because you get cheaper tickets. Anything to save them pennies! 

As usual there were a lot of the same artists around but it was refreshing to see new artists getting out there and selling themselves as a brand and getting recognition from the public and from the industry in a way because they're selling works next to professionals. I remember when I was selling stuff at one of the stalls back in 2010 and it's the best way to get networking with the professionals. This is definitely something I want to do again because I'd love to get feedback on my work. 

This nicely leads me onto the fact that I regret not bringing a portfolio of my college work to get feedback on. I wasn't really expecting to go to the convention because I didn't know whether I could afford it or not and because of this, I was rushed didn't have time to put some work together. I'm hoping that after this exhibition we're having in.. December I think it was, that I'll have something more professional to show because the work so far isn't really at a standard in which I'd want to show it off. Presenting my work in different and more professional ways is something I will definitely work on as the years go by.

Environment WIP

So after deciding on a wall design I started to put together a corridor using the bevelled cubes and different wall patterns I created to reach a design I was happy with. As you can see I also created a dome at the bottom and roughly made the stairs to the altar and added a few columns where I saw fit. 

Me and Daryl were in constant contact when I was modelling the environment and he explained some ideas he had for the dome room that he didn't necessarily add to the blocked out environment. He explained his ideas on having balconies and different floors and hanging foliage and such and me and Adam agreed that it was a really nice concept that we'd try add. So I sculpted out the different tiers for the dome and this is what I ended up with. 

When I reached this stage, I had some more uv mapping to do so me and Adam passed around our work and he then started to add new environment assets and started texturing.

Chris Green

Chris Green is a second year student at Norwich University and studies Game Art and Design. His modelling abilities are at a really professional level and the texturing and attention to detail is impeccable. He uses a mix of programs the main ones being Maya, Cry Engine, Z Brush 4, Photoshop, and some personalised packages and add-ons. Here is just a few bits of his work some of which I referenced for the corridor design.

This is a great example of his attention to detail. The scratchy textures on the rock and the cracks and chips in the block look so real. It almost looks like a photograph and it's truly inspiring. I'd really love to get to a level in which my work couldn't be noticed if I put it into a real environment. For a future project I really wanted to try out something like this. It's definitely a great idea for portfolio work I think, to create a simple asset but kit it out to a professional standard. All the small details count and can be the difference between a good and great envrionment.

This is a level design Chris did using the unreal engine. All the assets, the lighting and the small details like the foliage hanging from the trees and the tree roots have been executed so well. I'd like to say it looks real and it does but I think there that sense of perfectness about it especially in the brick works. But overall it's a beautiful piece of work and it serves as a great reference for our group project. Although there's a huge difference in terms of graphic style the different plants and the idea of adding statues might come in handy.

This is one of the pieces I referenced while making the temple corridor. The geometry for this is really sharp and flat and the textures are quite subtle which I like. I think for the graphic style we're aiming for as a group though the textures and stuff will be a lot more simplified than this but despite that, really grateful to find another student working on the Aztec/Mayan environment. It's been really useful as a visual aid.

Temple Walls

Daryl had blocked out the environment for me in Maya so we could get an idea of space and layout. This was then forwarded to me and I took that and started modelling. First I started off with the long corridor our characters will walk through which will open out into a big dome. I looked up some different brick arrangements for walls and tried various different combinations.

My main source of inspiration for the brick work were these images here. One of them was done by an Environment Artist called Chris Green and the other I couldn't find an artist for. I'll definitely make a post about Chris Green but for now back to my work. I specifically looked up Aztec Mayan style walls and these models popped up. I really liked the idea of having different sized bricks because it adds a little something and the opportunity to have a little bit of fun the texturing is there. For these images in particular the texturing is nice and simple, yet detailed and the models themselves look quite sharp. I really love the little engravings of images and squiggles in the walls, it adds a really nice touch. This is something I might attempt doing but at the moment I'm quite happy with the bricks alone. The different sizes keeps the wall from looking dull and it's simple yet effective I think.

The design I think I'm going to go with is the second one from the left. It has more variation and I think too many of the big bricks or too many of the small bricks looks like too much and I think this design has a good balance.

UV Mapping = Therapeutic

So after volunteering to do UV mapping for the group project I've found myself really enjoying it. The first time we were introduced to UV mapping I found it unbelievably hard but after doing it now I don't understand how that was so. I find myself really getting immersed into it and I won't leave it until it's done and I can do it a lot faster than I first anticipated too.

I had a lot of fun unwrapping this character because the clothes and body are all one piece of geometry so there was a lot of problem solving that had to be done.

I tried to arrange it in a logical order but when I handed it over to Adam he rearranged a few things because textures were getting stretched and such because the UV shells for some parts of the character weren't big enough. This is something I will definitely keep in mind for the next character.